s added its temptations; the darkness of northern climes both
rendering the typical character of Light more deeply felt than in Italy,
and necessitating its admission in larger masses; the Italian, even at
the period of his most exquisite art in glass, retaining the small
Lombard window, whose expediency will hardly be doubted by anyone who
has experienced the transition from the scorching reverberation of the
white-hot marble front, to the cool depth of shade within, and whose
beauty will not be soon forgotten by those who have seen the narrow
lights of the Pisan duomo announce by their redder burning, not like
transparent casements, but like characters of fire searing the western
wall, the decline of day upon Capraja.

38. Here, then, arose one great distinction between Northern and
Transalpine Gothic, based, be it still observed, on mere necessities of
climate. While the architect of Santa Maria Novella admitted to the
frescoes of Ghirlandajo scarcely more of purple lancet light than had
been shed by the morning sun through the veined alabasters of San
Miniato; and looked to the rich blue of the quinquipartite vault above,
as to the mosaic of the older concha, for conspicuous aid in the color
decoration of the whole; the northern builder burst through the walls of
his apse, poured over the eastern altar one unbroken blaze, and lifting
his shafts like pines, and his walls like precipices, ministered to
their miraculous stability by an infinite phalanx of sloped buttress and
glittering pinnacle. The spire was the natural consummation. Internally,
the sublimity of space in the cupola had been superseded by another kind
of infinity in the prolongation of the nave; externally, the spherical
surface had been proved, by the futility of Arabian efforts, incapable
of decoration; its majesty depended on its simplicity, and its
simplicity and leading forms were alike discordant with the rich
rigidity of the body of the building. The campanile became, therefore,
principal and central; its pyramidal termination was surrounded at the
base by a group of pinnacles, and the spire itself, banded, or pierced
into aerial tracery, crowned with its last enthusiastic effort the
flamelike ascent of the perfect pile.

39. The process of change was thus consistent throughout, though at
intervals accelerated by the sudden discovery of resource, or invention
of design; nor, had the steps been less traceable, do we think the
suggestiveness of R